Saturday, August 21, 2010

Bat in the Attic Status Report #5

I am still working on Scourge of the Demon. The Adventure portion is done but I am making a mini-supplement for a barony in the Majestic Wilderlands in the second half. It will have a regional gazetteer (done), A beggar encampment (done), a feudal village (half done), and a mage conclave (outline). I apologize for the slow going but I make progress every day.

Sales for Majestic Wilderlands have fallen off as expected. I sold 37 print copies and 28 PDF copies in April, May, and June. I am quite pleased and thank everyone who bought a copy. We will see how 3rd and 4th quarter sales do as far the long tail goes.

I do advise would be publishers not to let up on any advertising efforts. The recent Escapist Review netted me a few sales. Appreciate it Alex! This serves as a reminder that we only barely scratched the potential of our market so keep looking for those opportunities.

As for other project I am coming into the home stretch of the How to make a Fantasy Sandbox series. I plan to collect it, get it edited, and make it into a nice product. I also did some work on projects further out like Lands of Adventures, and the Main Campaign Guide for the Majestic Wilderlands.

I am bending to your will and should be purchasing a Majestic Wilderlands copy soon in the future.

As for a "How to Build a Sandbox" book, I would love to see your mapping tutorial (using preferably Inkscape as it is free) finished and added to such a resource. Now THAT would be 100% purchase for me! Then it could be called, "How to Build and Map a Sandbox!" Awesomeness in a can!

@Bane, my email is on my blogger profile. Just click my name on this comment and you will see it.

They are general overview. The book is half a set of house rules implementing Swords & Wizardry for the Majestic Wilderlands and half a general overview of the setting. The maps reflect that level of detail.

For the more detail oriented products I will be using Harn style. My style diverged enough that while I am similar it not the same. For example my hill and mountain textures isn't exactly the same as Columbia's games.

Bat in the Attic Games

How to make a Sandbox

The Old School Renaissance

To me the Old School Renaissance is not about playing a particular set of rules in a particular way, the dungeon crawl. It is about going back to the roots of our hobby and seeing what we could do differently. What avenues were not explored because of the commercial and personal interests of the game designers of the time.

What are RPGs?

A game where the players play individual characters interacting with a setting with their actions adjudicated by a human referee.

Rules are an aide to help the referee adjudicate actions and to help the players interact with the setting.

Dice are used to inject uncertainty which make a tabletop RPG campaign more interesting than "Let's Pretend".

The only thing a player needs to do to roleplay a character is to act if he or she was really there in the setting in that situation.